Gulu High was founded in 1914 and has educated many prominent Ugandan leaders. From 1986 to 1989, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) used Gulu High School as a base to fight the UPDF (Uganda People’s Defense Force), whose barracks were located just outside the school grounds. As a result of the war, almost all of the resources were looted and the majority of the buildings were damaged from stray bombshells. The LRA abducted 18 students from the school during this period- most of them have never returned. One of the students that were abducted from the library, Akulu Cecilia, was the first female abducted soldier in the LRA and became Joseph Kony’s first wife.

The buildings at Gulu High were damaged from rebel activity; doors, furniture, and most of the equipment had been looted. There was minimal protection from the weather due to leaking roofs, broken or missing windows, and cracked walls. The girls’ classroom and dorm was unsafe for use because of a cracked wall and sinking infrastructure. The dorm rooms were overcrowded, with 40 to 50 girls per room and many of the girls sharing cot-size mattresses on the floor. The girls’ dorm was isolated from the rest of the campus and in a vulnerable area where the security gate was only partially finished due to lack of funds.

We have been able to renovate the laboratory block and provide basic lab equipment with the support from three rounds of fundraising, but they remain below the national standard. A new borehole was drilled and motorized and the 50,000-liter water tank was renovated. A six-stance latrine block was completed after Round II, greatly assisting the sanitation demands of the growing population. The largest Schools for Schools project to date remains the two-story girl’s dormitory, which comfortably houses 192 girls. We have also been able to assist the staff by supplying them with a limited number of textbooks and by arranging teacher trainings, psychosocial support for guidance counselors, as well as financial management, record keeping and computer literacy trainings.

Work is currently underway on a second two-story girls dormitory, which will be mostly funded through Round III contributions, meaning that the initial funds raised under Round IV will complete this project. Thereafter, Schools for Schools will continue to support Gulu High in the supply of scholastic material, teacher training and the initiation of the emotional literacy program.